The Fundamental Questions Facing the Saints Organization and Ownership

I was 100% confident on a rebuild last season. That rebuild would have included trading away Cam, Davis and AK, three of my favorite players. It isn't fair to them to waste their last productive seasons being part of a rebuild and the Saints would have had an obligation to maximize their value at the time. I was against signing Carr as I did not think he was good enough, particularly in big situations to deliver a championship. I was ok with bringing back Dennis Allen but only as a lame duck to start the rebuild.

I thought this season was perfect to give Jameis or some random young QB a real chance and let a young rookie back him up. Basically a lottery play to see if we can hit paydirt on a QB. Put our young guys on the field to get some experience and washed out as much dead money as possible. Then go into the 2024 season with a ton of great draft picks, hire a new young and energetic coaching staff and get our QB in the draft. Then we would have a really good young nucleus to build around on both sides of the ball. I think in the 2025 season we would be highly competitive and have a team that was built to compete for a long time and be in a financial position to go get some real impact players through trades and free agency. We could have freed up $100M of cap space going into 2025.

That one extra season means our young nucleus is one season older, our veterans that we could have traded lost significant value just being a year older and we spent a ton of money on Carr. We've committed to this season so we have to try and maximize our chances. If it doesn't work then we clean house but it sets everything back a lot. We could have been a sure thing for a top 5 pick with two picks at the top of the second round pick plus whatever we got from trading away some excellent players.

I sure hope I'm proven wrong but I'm confident I will not be. However, that confidence has gone from 100% to 90%. Our defense has shown me enough that I think with a little more pressure from our dline that there is a chance we could put together one of those once in a decade type runs where a defense is so dominant it doesn't matter what the offense does.

The last thing I want to see is a team stuck hovering around .500 for several years in a row. It's just a waste of everyone's time.